As I slip seamlessly through the decades into my 5^th as a psychotherapist/counsellor, and my 7^th as a concerned human being, the focus of my attention has moved increasingly onto human relationships in general, and marriage / couples counselling in particular, as being an area of deep universal concern and little real understanding.

When one assesses the therapeutic approach to marriage counselling over the years, it is evident that the main focus of attention has remained where it has always been; on the major issues, chronic difficulties, and disturbing events dividing the couple. At first glance this seems to be a thoroughly reasonable course of action. However, on closer inspection, the number of couples that don’t complete the therapy, or give up after one or two sessions, leads one to the conclusion that all is not well with the approach offered.

When asking the question “what could cause such a poor completion rate” in couples desperate to find a solution to their problem, two things stand out above all others!

1. One or other of the parties – very often the male (but by no means always) can be relatively unwilling to attend the session from the start, or having turned up rather than upset the partner further, will find it all too difficult to open up to an unfamiliar 3^rd person with whom they may not feel at all comfortable! This, fundamentally for them, is far too steep a therapeutic gradient! In emotional terms it could be likened to offering an advanced mathematics test to a child on his first day at junior school – overwhelming!
2. Many clients when asked initially to summarise the principal difficulty with the marriage answer “we can’t/don’t communicate” yet this is rarely, if ever, addressed!

The Effective Marriage / Couples Course provides a perfect gradient, because it is designed to bypass the existing difficulties which are largely consequences of poor communication and a lack of understanding of the actual mechanics at work in human relationships.

When the short-course is completed the communication between the couple is often so dramatically improved that the couple are able to talk together about things which were previously too uncomfortable to handle! Thus at this point, the couple and myself will be in a much better position to assess whether or not any further action needs to be taken.

This usually depends upon how much emotional damage the couple have done to each other during the difficult moments in their joint history, and whether these can be overcome by the new understandings and improved interaction afforded by the couple’s course!

In conclusion, and as a result of my long years of experience, I have been able to put together material that is so potent that many couples have been able, as a result, to change their relationship to such a degree that they feel they have achieved their purpose for seeking help!

Because I am so confident of the effectiveness of the Marriage / Couples Course, I am happy to be able to offer a full money back guarantee!

A therapeutic first, I believe!

At Effective Counselling, we of course use coping strategies from time to time particularly early on in treatment. But much more importantly, we expect to reduce the reliance on anger, as a way of dealing with events at critical stress moments in life, by reducing the negative forces in the mind which drives this behaviour forward and overwhelms the patient into following and dramatising its destructive behavioural demands!

As with all our therapy work, we seek primarily to eliminate the presenting condition, rather than simply settling for offering a palliative.

This can be a single trauma, a miscarriage, an affair, or a loss of someone or something of importance; often the arrival of a new baby can have the effect of one partner withdrawing his or her attention from the other for example, or behaving in a manor that can appear unfair or unacceptable to the other. It is true to say that any form of stress can pressure one, or both partners, into showing a side of themselves that was completely unexpected, new, or disturbing to the other.

A familiar complaint at this point is often “he/she is not the man/woman I married”. Sometimes a minor behavioural trait which in the first flush of love or desire can be endearing, when encountered for the millionth time can become overwhelmingly distressing! This negative response is what causes the problem in any relationship. It will have the effect, depending on the intensity of the ensuing confrontation, of locking both partners into a negative and fixed pattern of response, which when triggered will illicit in each partner similar negative attitudes and responses each time it is brought up. This can now become the trigger for increasingly hostile encounters, causing the relationship to slide rapidly into a more and more negative place.

There are many different causes contributing to relationship problems but fundamentally it is a slide from a positive condition, i.e. a loving, caring and nurturing relationship, to a negative condition where upset, disturbance, anger and general mayhem rules to the distress and despair of both parties.

At Effective Counselling we are fortunate to have the key to unlock this condition and help the couple to turn their relationship around by:

1. Re-educating both parties so that they understand what is actually happening in the relationship, and why it is in their own interests both parties to change his or her behaviour towards the other.
2. Helping each partner to apply this new approach to their day-to-day interactions, and to understand and appreciate the benefit to themselves of each party working for the good of the other, and how that change of behaviour will produce a better result for them and begin to show an immediate benefit to both parties.

This policy alone can account for a large proportion of couples who drop out after the first one or two sessions. The reason for this is very simply that one of the most effective and usual ways of avoiding one’s own guilt is to blame someone else – in this case the other partner. The very last thing the person wants is to feel his or her defence under attack at the first meeting! Also, one risks the couple continuing the discussion on the way home – which can drift into the usual pattern of confrontation and argument with all its attendant upset and distress. This can give a distorted and negative view of the whole process of therapy in general and the therapist in particular.

At Effective Marriage Counselling we seek to begin restoring the quality of the communication before any issues are discussed at all. The rationale here is issues come and go in a relationship, but the quality of the communication defines the relationship and is therefore, in a hierarchy of importance, almost at the very top. In fact, from the practitioner’s point of view and for all practical purposes it is at the very top.

Thus one begins to see that many of the issues complained about at the outset of marriage counselling derive from the poor state of communication and general interaction of the couple. When this is addressed by the practitioner, the benefits are immediate and directly proportional to the degree of adoption by both parties.

This is a relationship of two parties, and the quality of that relationship is created by both parties acting and reacting with and against each other from the beginning. As the quality of the interaction changes so too does the quality of the relationship.